" may be understood as referring to this
matter, in the concluding words of his address: "My tongue is weary;
when my legs are too, I will bid you good-night: and so kneel down
before you--but, indeed, to pray for the queen." And to this old
custom of loyal prayer for the reigning sovereign has been traced the
addition of the words, "Vivat rex," or "Vivat regina," which were wont
to appear in the playbills, until quite recent times, when our
programmes became the advertising _media_ of the perfumers.
The main object of the epilogue, however, was as Massinger has
expressed it in the concluding address of his comedy, "Believe as you
List"--
The end of epilogues is to inquire
The censure of the play, or to desire
Pardon for what's amiss;
and as Theseus states the matter in "The Midsummer Night's Dream:" "No
epilogue, I pray you, for your play needs no excuse." Sometimes a sort
of bluntness of speech was affected, as in the epilogue to one of
Beaumont and Fletcher's comedies:
Why there should be an epilogue to a play
I know no cause. The old and usual way
For which they were made was to entreat the grace
Of such as were spectators.
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